I Went Into the Woods
by Corky the Quirk
Summary: Charlie ponders Neil's whereabouts, and his answer comes in the most interesting way. One-shot.


**Author's Note:** So I'm not really sure where this idea came from, but the first sentence popped into my head and I guess I wanted to see where it would go, so here it is. It's not very well thought out, but I felt like posting it anyway. Ha.

**Disclaimer:** I only own Trevor, and the mention of his sister.

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Charlie wakes up screaming. He's been dreaming about Neil again. Although dream might not be the correct word. He thought the nightmares of Neil killing himself would be the worst. But they aren't. The worst nightmares are the ones where Charlie and the rest of the gang are goofing around, smiling as if everything is okay, and then, out of the corner of his eye, he'll see Neil. Just standing there, watching him. And then Neil will smile, and begin to walk backwards. Charlie doesn't know how, but somehow, in the dream, he knows Neil is heading for a cliff. And as Charlie runs as fast as he can, trying to grab Neil before he falls over the edge, his parents appear before him. "What are you doing running around with these boys?" they ask. "You should be at the bank. Get back to the bank." And as his parents chastise him, Charlie has to watch as Neil takes a final step and disappears from sight.

This is always the part that Charlie wakes up from. Always screaming; always with a cold sweat that plasters his hair to his forehead; always tangled in the sheets, as if he actually had been struggling to get to Neil. Charlie has no roommate at the monastery his parents shipped him off to. No one can deal with his night terrors. Charlie doesn't understand how the other boys don't have night terrors themselves, locked away from the world far more than Hellton ever restricted anyone.

Charlie takes a deep breath and runs his hand through his soaked hair, shivering. He stares over at the empty bed next to him and wonders how Todd ever slept after Neil departed. Alone, knowing no one would be there for you if you needed. Of course, Todd had the rest of the Dead Poets during the daytime if he felt the need to talk or be comforted. But Charlie had no one.

He smoked outside the cathedral. He smirked, an expression rarely seen on the face of another. He spoke of sexual encounters with women, even if he _did_ make up the more raunchy stories. And he did all this on purpose, alarming the future priests and deacons, in order to distance himself. He didn't want to make new acquaintances; he just wanted his old ones back.

Charlie buried himself in books. Not ones of the textbook variety, but those of poetry, specifically the early works of John Donne, reveling in the suggestive nature of the words. He would memorize and recite, never giving a straight answer to anyone, communicating, instead, in verse, just to see if anyone would take the time to decode. No one did. And eventually, students and teachers alike stopped trying; giving up on saving such a lost soul.

This was the front he offered to the world. One similar, but most definitely different, from that of the Charlie Dalton he had been before. Whereas when he was with the Dead Poets, he would jest about his escapades and recall verse upon verse with a twinkle in his eye and a jaunt to his walk, meaning most everything he did; while here, he instead carried out various plots with the same sort of glamour, but never was there the spark of life in his eyes as there was when Neil was still around.

In taking his own life, Neil had inadvertently taken a bit of Charlie's, and, Charlie was sure, a bit of the other boys', life. Charlie wasn't blaming Neil for his action, Charlie would never do that. He was merely equating the hollow and empty feeling inside himself with not just the loss of Neil Perry, the boy he had grown up with since they were both in diapers.

Charlie dragged his hand across his face, glaring out the window at the moon that stared back at him. There was a knock at the door, and Trevor, a nervous boy that reminded him of Todd when he had first arrived, spoke through the wood. "Charles? Is that you? I heard you screaming and wondered if a demon was trying to overpower you in your sleep."

Charlie groaned. Yes, he was fighting demons, inner demons, but the way the young men around this place always assumed he was battling with demons sent by the devil himself, got annoying fast. "Yeah," Charlie yelled from his bed, not feeling the need to get up and answer the door, "I was fighting a demon. It was a hard fight, since he brought along a witch and a few dwarves, but I convinced them to have an orgy instead. So everything's fine."

Trevor squeaked in surprise, and Charlie could hear him scuttle away. He knew better than to treat Trevor, who was actually quite impressionable, in such a manner, but after having to relive the same nightmare over and over, waking up in the middle of the night, dealing with Trevor in a kind way was not on Charlie's agenda.

Charlie growled into his pillow in frustration as he lay back down. A loud thump emanating from his desk roused him into a sitting position. "The hell…?"

Throwing the sheets from his legs, Charlie slipped out of his bed and cautiously approached his study area. Sitting on the top of his desk was one of Charlie's many poetry books. It appeared to have slammed open to a certain page. He could feel the hair on the back of his neck rise as he took a few steps closer, leaning in to glance at which poem the book was displaying.

Thoreau. 'I went into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life…' Charlie glanced out his window, where the tree line was just on the outskirts of the secluded monastery campus. It could have been the moon and the shadows playing tricks on him, but he swore he saw a figure waving at him, beckoning, just in front of the forest. He blinked, trying to decipher if he was hallucinating.

The knock on the door startled him, making him jump nervously. "Charles? I heard a loud noise? Was that you?" Trevor asked timidly.

"Go away, Trevor," Charlie shouted.

"Okay…"

Taking a deep breath, attempting to calm his racing heart, Charlie stared out the window once more, and, sure enough, the figure was still there, this time waving more frantically. Charlie's mind was spinning. What should he do? Go out and meet whatever was waiting for him? Stay inside and cower under the sheets? Yeah right. Charlie Dalton might be a hollowed out shell of what he used to be, but he was still up for a few risks.

He slipped on his shoes, grabbing up his coat, and opened his door as quietly as the old, creaking hinges would permit. "Swear to God, Trevor," Charlie whispered to himself, "If you try to stop me I will lock you up in a closet and convince you it's the Domain of Satan."

Creeping across the snow laden grounds, Charlie made it to the patiently awaiting form of Neil, who was grinning widely, as if he had just won the part of Puck in heaven's enactment of "A Midsummer Night's Dream".

"Neil?" Charlie asked in disbelief.

His laugh echoed out across the lawn. "Well who else do you think, Charlie?"

Charlie shook his head. "This isn't possible; I'm dreaming right now and you're going to fall off of a cliff."

Neil raised an eyebrow. "I'm certainly not going to launch myself over a cliff anytime soon."

"But this doesn't happen. You're…you're…" Charlie didn't want to say the actual word. "I'm going insane," he finally concluded.

Neil bent down and rolled a ball of snow in his mitten clad hands, chucking it at Charlie's chest. "You're not going insane."

Charlie blinked as drops of melting snow fell back to the ground. It was a real snowball. He met Neil's eyes. "You're alive?"

Neil laughed once again. "In a way. I mean, I feel more alive now than I did when actually was alive. If that makes any sense." Charlie nodded, trying to digest this information. At least Neil wasn't still suffering, at least he was okay. "I am," Neil spoke, staring intently at Charlie's face. "Okay, that is."

Now Neil was a mind reader?

"Oh," Charlie gulped. He could feel tears pricking his eyes again, just like when he had first been informed of Neil's departure from the world.

"You don't need to have nightmares about me anymore, Charlie. I'm happy. Really. And now _you_ have to be happy. Go out and live your life and become the crazy guy we all knew you were cut out to be," Neil chuckled.

Charlie smirked, blaming the cold for his runny nose. "Yeah, well," Charlie shrugged.

"Don't use me as an excuse not to live," Neil replied in a serious tone. "You've got great things ahead of you, Charlie."

"So did you," Charlie argued.

Neil grinned, a soft light coming into his eyes, "The boys need you, even if you aren't with them right now. Trust me Charlie, you're meant to be here, on Earth."

"And what am I meant to be here for Neil?" Charlie snapped suddenly, angered at how calm Neil was taking this situation. "Tell me that."

Neil clicked his tongue. "Can't do that, Slick. There's certain rules I have to stick to, and telling you a few of the possibilities of your future would be breaking a few."

"A lot of help you are," Charlie grumbled.

"Carpe diem," Neil responded.

Charlie smirked.

"I gotta get going," Neil admitted, glancing up at the sky. "Big guy doesn't exactly like us frequenting the planet we left. But I have one more thing for you." Charlie cocked his head, listening for Neil's final words. Instead, he received Neil's fist slamming into his arm.

Charlie jumped back, "Ow! What the hell was that for?"

Neil grinned. "That's from Trevor's sister. She wanted me to tell you to stop being such a jerk to him."

Charlie blinked. "Trevor's sister?"

Neil nodded. "He lost her last year in a car crash." With a small smile Neil added, "Get to know him a little better Charlie, he's a nice kid." Stepping backwards, just like in Charlie's nightmares, Neil jokingly saluted him. "I'll be seeing you Charlie." Charlie saluted back.

Disappearing behind the tree line and into the dark forest, a gust of wind picked up, whipping Charlie's old Welton cloak around, and, Charlie knew, that Neil was where he wanted to be.

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**Author's Note:** And that's it :)


End file.
